


Like a Winter's Wind

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Child Abuse, M/M, Murder, Mutant Powers, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2733719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His sister had given him the lighter. He clicks it open, clicks it closed, and tells Frank this, who looks at him with a bored expression on his face, shrugs like the admission means nothing, a half-whisper between them that Mickey spits through bloody teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Winter's Wind

**LIKE A WINTER'S WIND**  
SHAMELESS  
Ian/Mickey  
 **WARNINGS** : Mentions of murder and suicide; child abuse  
 **NOTES** : thenjw requested a Mutant!AU and I always seem to take her lovely ideas and make them as dark as possible. So, I love you bb, but I'm sorry!

**1.**

His sister had given him the lighter. He clicks it open, clicks it closed, and tells Frank this, who looks at him with a bored expression on his face, shrugs like the admission means nothing, a half-whisper between them that Mickey spits through bloody teeth. 

They had untied his hands an hour ago, had trusted him with the lighter, and Frank places one palm on the table in front of him – fearless – and asks Mickey what he plans to do with his gift. Mickey laughs loudly, fake, the twinge of pain in his jaw as he says, “What gift?”

Frank sighs and leans back in his chair. “I have no use for self-pity,” he says. “I have no use for sarcasm, either,” as he holds up a hand to Mickey’s intake of breath, his open mouth, “So make a decision.”

Mickey clicks open the lighter again, traces the lick of flame carved into the metal, cold at first, but getting warmer in his hand. He knows the design by touch, has imprinted it into his memory, knows the sound it makes when the flame ignites, knows the way it burns bright and then brighter in his hand. 

He’s kept the lighter empty for years; he’s never needed the fuel. 

“What do you want me to do?”

Frank smiles, nods at Mickey’s hands. “What you’re good at.”

Mickey’s fingers are swallowed by the flame. 

 

**2.**

Frank tells Mickey not to call the school a prison – through a cloud of smoke, Frank bringing the cigarette away from his mouth, his lips curled into a sneer, “I never pegged you for being so unimaginative,” his voice biting into Mickey like a chill – but it sure looks like one. 

The bedrooms are small and cell-like, white walls with little to no personal affects, bruised faces peering out of the windows as Frank leads Mickey down the hallway. Mickey still aches from the beating he took earlier, keeps rolling his tongue over a loose tooth, holds his ribs as tightly as he can, and Frank pretends not to notice, doesn’t even bother to slow down when Mickey stumbles once, almost falls. Mickey’s hands are starting to warm, his blood starting to burn underneath his own skin, the pain licking like fire inside of him, and it takes all of his control not to give in. 

Frank stops at a tiny open room, nothing inside except a mattress and iron frame, the cold metal of a sink and toilet, the blank expanse of the walls. He waves a hand for Mickey to go in, which he does, and says, “The walls are reinforced, flame-resistant, so don’t worry about burning down the place while we sleep.”

“I wasn’t,” Mickey says, but they both know that that’s a lie. 

Frank stares at him for a moment, and Mickey thinks that he might say something reassuring, something thoughtful, something that he needs to hear, but then Frank takes a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, taps one out, places it to his lips. 

He says, “Got a light?”

 

**3.**

There’s a boy in his class that can walk through walls. 

“Must make robbing banks easy,” Mickey says and the boy holds up his middle finger and tells him, his voice low-pitched and irritated, that he’s never heard that one before. He calls him a name that Mickey doesn’t quite catch and then turns back around in his seat. 

The classes are long and painfully dull, just like Mickey’s old school. Everyone is here to learn how to control what’s inside of them, the teacher begins with a knowing look to Mickey. Someone calls out a crude joke in the back, and Mickey clicks open his lighter, clicks it shut again. 

There’s a girl that can grow flowers in the palms of her hands, stems slicing through her skin like razors, great thorny roses, light pink peonies, sunflowers with wide, bright petals. There’s another girl who can change her face when it suits her, the arches and contours shifting effortlessly, her smile a little off when it’s in the shape of another mouth. 

Mickey turns to the boy seated beside him during a lull in the class and asks him what he can do. The boy is quiet, subdued, his hands in his lap as he looks at Mickey, and there’s a purple thumbprint on his cheek, from someone who had pressed hard enough to bruise. The boy smiles slowly, sluggishly, drugged, and holds out his hand for Mickey to take. 

Mickey does, and it’s as cold as ice. 

“You’re the pyro, right?” The boy says, his voice soft. 

Mickey nods, his fingertips starting to grow numb. 

The boy’s eyes are bright blue, the color of water in winter. “I’m Ian,” he says, and Mickey can see tiny spider webs of frost climb across the back of his own hand, wind up his arm, and it feels cold enough to burn. “I can freeze things.”

Mickey falls in love. 

 

**4.**

Ian leaves a slip of paper in Mickey’s room one night, a torn piece from his notebook, Mickey can see the tail end of Ian’s notes from class, an errant e, a winding s. He thinks maybe it’s a mistake, left behind by accident, a forgetful Ian, a clumsy Ian – sleepy-eyed and smiling slowly at Mickey, one hand between the two of them as if he was reaching out to touch Mickey, to hold him, Mickey wanting to move closer and feeling cowardly, Ian telling him to sleep well, his mouth poised and perfect and beautifully cold as he leans over and places it over Mickey’s, their first kiss, soft, small, before Ian turns and leaves the room, saying little, meaning nothing – but as Mickey traces the sloping handwriting with his fingers, commits the words to memory, he thinks better of it. 

The door locks behind him, the guard on the other side sweeping a glance over the room, processing Mickey and his non-threatening stance before moving down the row. Mickey looks up at the camera mounted on the ceiling, the red blinking light, the man on the other side, looks back down at the note in his hands. 

It reads, Burn Them All. 

 

**5.**

Ian tells Mickey that all of the children locked up here are not the first. He speaks slowly, softly, and has his cold hands on Mickey’s, and Mickey has a bite mark on his neck from Ian’s sharp teeth, and Mickey wants to trace it over and over with his fingertips, wants to feel the warmth of his hands and the cool of Ian’s mouth, but he doesn’t move, can’t. 

Ian’s saying, “There were others.”

And there were, there was: a boy who could read minds, give thoughts, make others do what he wanted them to without them realizing. He was dangerous, wild, and once Frank had found him trying to pass off a piece of colored paper as a one hundred dollar bill in one of those all-night convenience stores, had laughed then and told him that he wouldn’t tell the cashier, wouldn’t call the police, because serving a prison sentence would be such a waste of his God-given talent. 

(Frank doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in talent.)

Mickey asks what happened to him and Ian says that he was one of the first ones to go out into the field with Frank, to play a part in the war that Frank is currently waging, to fight whatever fight Frank is trying to win, that he was one of the first ones to never come back. 

Ian says, “His name was Lip.”

Ian says, “He was my brother.”

Ian says, “Whatever Frank is trying for here, whatever he’s trying to accomplish, he’s not above killing his own children to do it.”

Mickey looks down at his hands in his lap, the hands covered by Ian’s, watches the frost start to form, watches his fingers start to turn blue. 

Ian says, “I’m the only one left.”

Mickey slides his hands away, feels the warmth under his skin again, feels the burning that starts small, warm, feels it start to grow stronger, feels it start to go up and out, lets the fire engulf him. 

And Mickey says, “Burn them all.”

 

**6.**

There was: a girl who could run away from everything, impossibly fast, frighteningly fast, a girl who ran without looking back. Ian remembers her most of all, the smell of her hair as she leaned down to press her cheek to his, the strength of her arms around him, her smile, her voice, the sound she made when she first discovered Ian’s gift. 

She was beautiful and she was strong and she was everything that their mother wasn’t, had taken care of them when their mother had fucked off, had picked up right where their mother had left off. Frank had never thanked her for that, Jesus, Ian had never thanked her for that, and he thinks that he regrets that more than anything else. 

He had watched when Frank had taken her away, had let her press a kiss to his forehead before she left, had felt betrayed when she never came back. 

Frank had said that there was nothing that could be done. 

Ian tells Mickey that that was the moment he had stopped believing. 

“Believing what,” Mickey asks, his mouth hovering over the pulse point of Ian’s wrist, his voice a whisper. 

Ian doesn’t move, his eyes sharp enough to cut. He opens his mouth, and it’s nothing but ice, his breath escaping in plumes. “In Frank.”

 

**7.**

The teachers forget that they are talking to children, forget not to grab too hard, forget not to push back, forget not to slap, kick, punch. The classroom is a field of white casts and beige gauze, purple bruises, swollen pink cuts, and if Mickey hadn’t been used to it already, if he hadn’t have grown up in a home where his father valued his fist more than his words, he might not have lasted. 

The class gets smaller at times, after Frank cherrypicks the team for his next mission, after one of the kids steals a knife from the kitchen or a handful of pills from the infirmary, but then Frank finds new students: a boy who can move things without touching them, a girl who can see electronic frequencies, another who can control the wind. Each learns how to handle their powers, each learns how to use it without losing control, each learns how to become a weapon. 

Frank sits in the back of one class, watching Mickey set fire to a piece of paper, putting out the flame just by thinking it. He lights one cigarette and then another, chain smokes as each child shows him what they can do. Ian is last, curls ice around himself like a fortress, lets his heart beat slow, lets his breathing drop to three, two, one shallow breath, almost freezes himself to the point of death. 

Frank says, “Enough,” his voice is dangerous, a warning. 

Ian shakes the ice off like water, smiles, and it hurts. 

Mickey slides a warm hand in Ian’s, but Ian can’t even feel it. 

 

**8.**

The story goes: each of Frank’s seven children had a gift. 

Ian’s was fragile enough that Frank never had a use for it; let Ian’s brothers and sisters go in his place.

Mickey understands now why when Frank asks Ian to join him on the latest operation, a full-stop suicide mission, that Ian says yes. 

A burning kiss, cold and then hot and then cold again, Ian placing blue hands on Mickey’s face, Ian smiling big and wide and bright, Mickey tells him to stop being so reckless, asks him not to go, tells him that he’ll never forgive him. 

Ian’s hands turning pink where they touch Mickey’s skin, burning, Ian says, “This is something that should have happened a long time ago.”

Mickey says, “Please.”

And Ian whispers, “Burn them all.”

 

**9.**

Ian doesn’t come back. 

Mickey sets fire to the school. 

 

**10.**

Frank doesn’t make it out alive, but the children do. 

There’s a school in New York, a better school, and the ones that weren’t taken away from their families are invited to stay there, to resume their education, to heal. Mickey doesn’t leave, can’t, won’t, stays near the grounds just in case – just in case – finds a cheap motel where he can still smell the smoldering ashes, stays in bed all day, flips open his lighter, flips it closed. 

There are a few people that come, some of the guards that Frank had employed, pushing around the dirt with their shoes, touching the blocks of concrete that used to make up the foundation, touching the piles of wood, still warm. Mickey follows them all, tracks them to a remote area, starts fires that can all be explained as faulty wiring, hazardous appliances, accidental. 

It’s easy to do this, it’s easy to kill. 

He leaves the motel when he runs out of money, breaks into an abandoned house a few miles up the road, squats there for a while, steals everything he needs to survive, creates a home in the dirty, vacant space, flips open his lighter, flips it closed. 

He waits. 

Burn them all.  



End file.
